Russia Loses Control of Only Space Telescope:
Russia has lost control of its only space radio telescope but officials are working to re-establish communication, the country's beleaguered space agency said Monday.
The incident is the latest setback for Russia's debt-laden space industry, which in recent years has suffered the loss of spacecraft, satellites, and a failed manned launch.
Roscosmos said a US observatory detected signals from Russia's gigantic Spektr-R, or RadioAstron, telescope, which stopped responding to commands from Earth last Thursday.
Roscosmos said that meant the onboard systems were working independently.
The Spektr-R telescope was launched into orbit in 2011 to study black holes, neutron stars and Earth's magnetic field, among other subjects.
Complete with ground-based observatories and a 10-metre-long antenna, RadioAstron is one of the largest telescopes ever made.
A new failed attempt to regain control of the telescope ended at 2130 Moscow time (1830 GMT) on Monday, Russian news agencies quoted a Roscosmos official as saying.
Wikipedia's entry on Spektr-R notes:
Spektr-R[6] (or RadioAstron) is a Russian scientific satellite with a 10 m (33 ft) radio telescope on board. It was launched on 18 July 2011,[7] by Zenit-3F launcher, from Baikonur Cosmodrome to perform research on the structure and dynamics of radio sources within and beyond our galaxy. Together with some of the largest ground-based radio telescopes, this telescope forms interferometric baselines extending up to 350,000 km (220,000 mi).
[...] The main scientific goal of the mission is the study of astronomical objects with an angular resolution up to a few millionths of an arcsecond. This is accomplished by using the satellite in conjunction with ground-based observatories and interferometry techniques.
How large of an item on the Moon is required to subtend one millionth of an arc second as viewed from Earth?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Tuesday January 15 2019, @06:22AM
It's an accurate descriptor. They have been restructured repeatedly, some of their recent science missions have failed (Fobos-Grunt), they have lost launch business to SpaceX, India, etc., and they will lose more money once NASA switches to SpaceX and Boeing for manned launches to the ISS. Then you have the recent incident with a hole being drilled into a Soyuz. They face a future of competing with the likes of SpaceX's BFR/Starship while not having anywhere near the budget they need to do anything. NASA has its own problems with its manned spaceflight program, but Russia will have to spend some serious money if they want to realize ambitions at the Moon, Mars, or even in orbit following a 2028 ISS disengagement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roscosmos [wikipedia.org]
The U.S. may be a lot less willing to prop up Russia's space program as they have done since the end of the Cold War. I expect Russia to turn towards China instead.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]